I used to like this book. Then I realized it's basically Twilight for teenaged boys and started to think about it more critically.
Ender is an impossible creature and creates an archetype that cannot be lived up to. People make mistakes, it's what makes them learn, advance, succeed, become stronger. Ender is some kind of perverted ideal.
The way this essay describes military strategies makes it seems like those running today's theaters are absolute idiots that simply smash one group of soldiers to another just like the British did in the 1800s. This is not the case. "Attrition theory" is not what's employed in individual battles, pawn-for-pawn style exchanges. The US Army, as an example, takes extremely low numbers of casualties with staggeringly high numbers of casualties inflicted.
Most of these bold claims about Card's novel seem like fluff on closer examination. They're plot drivers for a novel and in that sense they bear a similarity to real-life examples. Nothing more.
So Ender's Shadow shows that the teachers running the game behind the scenes were playing a much deeper game, one designed to bring about the insights that Ender developed. That further, it was important that Ender developed them on his own so that he realize, he can never depend on doctrine handed down from the past, and so develop something from a fresh start.
Besides, Ender's Game is simply the setup for Speaker of the Dead, a much more interesting book.
To be fair. I read Ender's Game multiple times when I was younger. I have not yet read it again now that I have a better understanding of Sun Tzu's Art of War and the John Boyd biographies. I have no idea what I'd find if I read it again.
Aren't most heroes in books impossible creatures impossible to be lived up to?
I still think there is a lot more content in Ender's Game than in Twilight. The message of Twilight is basically "be depressed and broody, and a shiny vampire with superpowers will fall eternally in love with you". In Ender's Game at least there are real problems and real solutions, even if perhaps it is unrealistic that a single guy could have come up with them. Then again, the book was written by a single person, so it is not completely unfeasible to have such thoughts and ideas.
Stormin Norman's initial war plan for Iraq 1 was indeed attrition based. We were to land in Kuwait and beat the Iraqis back via blunt force. Cheney,secdef at the time, realized how bloody this would be, and pulled Boyd in from retirement to rewrite the war plan. The marines succeeded brilliantly with their part. The army did not, and concern for their flanks allowed the Iraqi army to escape.
Well, yeah; "Shut up, do as you're told, and we'll succeed in exterminating those other people" is a lesson the military takes in a somewhat different light from the general public.
> Ender is an impossible creature and creates an archetype that cannot be lived up to. People make mistakes, it's what makes them learn, advance, succeed, become stronger. Ender is some kind of perverted ideal.
Isn't that the point? It's the same as reading about the life of an amazing Olympic athlete. The book follows a prodigy military strategist -- shouldn't he be an archetype?
Ender is an impossible creature and creates an archetype that cannot be lived up to. People make mistakes, it's what makes them learn, advance, succeed, become stronger. Ender is some kind of perverted ideal.
The way this essay describes military strategies makes it seems like those running today's theaters are absolute idiots that simply smash one group of soldiers to another just like the British did in the 1800s. This is not the case. "Attrition theory" is not what's employed in individual battles, pawn-for-pawn style exchanges. The US Army, as an example, takes extremely low numbers of casualties with staggeringly high numbers of casualties inflicted.
Most of these bold claims about Card's novel seem like fluff on closer examination. They're plot drivers for a novel and in that sense they bear a similarity to real-life examples. Nothing more.